Article From The Virginian-Pilot


Field of broken dreams: Tampa won team, then faltered


By ED MILLER, The Virginian-Pilot
© July 12, 2004

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. "” Seventy-two degrees, and not a cloud in the dome. Not a fan in section 315, either, aside from Bob Boyle, a retired school teacher from Kensington, Md.

Boyle, who spends part of the year in St. Petersburg, was headed to Clearwater to catch a Class A Florida State League game but detoured to avoid an accident.

Instead, he set out to Tropicana Field to catch a Wednesday night game between the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Minnesota Twins.

"I hate this place," he said, as peanut shells piled up at his feet. "I hate the roof, I hate the artificial turf. I feel sorry for the players who have to play here."

The game was due to start in 10 minutes, but no one sat within 100 feet of Boyle, a lone speck way above the third-base line. The crowd, later announced at 9,107, was probably closer to 6,000.

"At least I got out of the heat," Boyle said.

Solitude is a weeknight game at "The Trop" – which is one of the nicer things that Tropicana Field has been called.

Sparse crowds and last-place teams have been the norm for the vast majority of Tampa Bay's seven-year history. Recently, the Devil Rays made national headlines when the team went on a month long tear that made it the hottest team in baseball. A three-game series with the Florida Marlins drew 76,000 fans. But with the team still hot, attendance plummeted back to pre-streak levels for a series against Toronto.

"Where did everyone go?" asked a headline in the local paper.

Maybe to the beach. Or back across the causeway to Tampa, where many fans thought the stadium should have been located in the first place.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. No city pursued baseball more ardently than sleepy St. Pete, where a powerful group of political and business leaders pined for the major leagues for almost 20 years. No city was left at the altar more times by flirtatious suitors or used so often like a crowbar for leverage for new stadiums in other cities. Political careers were ruined in the fallout, and regional rivalries intensified.

Bob Andleman, author of "Stadium For Rent," sums it up: "In the history of baseball – perhaps the history of professional sports in the United States – no community risked as much or embarrassed itself to the degree that the City of St. Petersburg did in its pursuit of a major league baseball team.

"It was the community that didn't understand no, or no way, or go away, kid, you're bothering me."

St. Pete is a case study in how many blind alleys and dead ends can pop up on the road to the major leagues – and it may be a cautionary tale for those pursuing major league sports in Hampton Roads.

"You can chase rumors up and down and back and forth," said Bill Bunker, former director of the Pinellas County Sports Commission. "And we did it for years."

Rumors and ghosts. At various times over 19 years, it appeared that the Twins, White Sox, Giants, Athletics and Mariners might be headed to St. Pete.

Finally, against the advice of Major League Baseball and the wishes of the electorate, and in an effort to beat a group from cross-bay rival Tampa to the punch, the St. Petersburg City Council voted to build a domed stadium on the industrial fringe of downtown, on a site known as "The Gas Plant" for the two giant fuel tanks that once stood there.

It was financed by revenue bonds backed by a resort tax. No public referendum was held.

The result was a pre cast concrete domed stadium with a roof that looks like a cocked hat or a cake that fell on one side. Completed in 1990 at a cost of $138 million and originally known as the Florida Suncoast Dome, it sat empty for three years, except for concerts and flea markets.

Meanwhile, St. Pete was passed over for an expansion team, with baseball officials instead awarding franchises to Miami and Colorado.

The Tampa Bay Lightning of the National Hockey League arrived in 1993, giving the building a primary tenant. An Arena Football League team also came. Both franchises played to big crowds.

That hasn't been the case since the Devil Rays arrived in 1998, after the stadium was closed for a 17-month, $85 million face lift that was intended to inject some charm.

All-dirt basepaths, murals of swimming devil rays, a tiki bar, $1 drink nights and an outfield hot tub that can hold 14 people have thus far not reminded anyone of Yankee Stadium.

"The facility works," said Bob Stewart, a Pinellas County commissioner who voted to build it as a member of the St. Petersburg City Council in 1986. "It doesn't have the charm that I'm sure a lot of other facilities have."

Nor does it have the fans. Tampa averaged 13,070 fans last year, and is up to about 17,000 this year, though the number reflects tickets sold , not a turnstile count.

In a 43,000-seat stadium, a crowd of 6,000-plus can make for a decidedly non-major-league atmosphere. That was the case for a pair of back-to-back games in late May, against the Twins.

During a Wednesday night game and an afternoon game the following day, vendors outnumbered patrons on the mostly empty upper concourses.

Michael Cuddyer, a Twins infielder from Chesapeake, compared the atmosphere to an instructional league game.

"You can hear fans' conversations," he said.

The atmosphere was more charged on Friday night, when the Yankees came to town and New York fans outnumbered Devil Rays fans two to one in the crowd of 20,627. Tampa is a Yankee stronghold. The club holds spring training there, and owner George Steinbrenner lives there. Yankees games are carried on the radio.

The Yankees cast a big shadow, but many fans, players and coaches, including Devil Rays Manager Lou Pinella, a Tampa native, say it's a matter of time before the Devil Rays establish their own identity.

After all, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were a laughingstock for years. Then they began winning, and now they have a waiting list of 108,000 for season tickets. The Lightning, chosen by Sports Illustrated as the worst franchise in all of major league sports in 1997, won the Stanley Cup this season, captivating the region.

"I don't think it's a tough market," said Devil Rays first baseman Tino Martinez, who grew up in Tampa. "We've just got to play better. If we can play better, and we can be competitive on a weekly basis, they'll come out."

The Devil Rays have been competitive lately, climbing within sight of second place in their division. But will the fans come ? Sports economists estimate the team needs to draw about 20,000 fans a night to remain viable.

Bunker, who was in on the ground floor of the effort to bring baseball to St. Pete back in 1977, said he thinks baseball has added to the region's quality of life.

But, he added: "We really overestimated this market's desire for the game. It was just a given that people would come . And we underestimated Tampa's reluctance to come across the bridge for anything other than to go to the beach."